Second Turk to be jailed over fake Avastin

A second Turkish man has been sentenced in a US court for smuggling fake versions of Roche's cancer blockbuster Avastin into the country.__

Sabahhadin Akman, an owner of Turkish import company Ozay Pharmaceuticals, has been sentenced to 30 months in jail and fined $150,000 for smuggling counterfeit, misbranded and adulterated cancer treatments. The US Food and Drug Administration noted that these included “multiple shipments” of Altuzan, the Turkish version of Avastin (bevacizumab).

In August 2014, Mr Akman pleaded guilty to the charges and the sentencing follows that of his business partner Ozkan Semizoglu, who was jailed for 27 months last year.__Mr Akman admitted in his plea agreement to selling Altuzan to Richard Taylor, a drug wholesaler in the UK who was sentenced to 18 months in jail in July 2013 and fined $800,000. A year earlier, agents of the FDA's Office of Criminal Investigations seized Altuzan from various US doctors and customers of Mr Taylor, some of which contained no active drug ingredient.